Stan Godlovitch-Musical Performance_ a Philosophical Study-Routledge (1998)

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

Music is a performing art yet our experience of it is usually through recordedmedia. The musical sounds we most often hear have often been electronicallyedited and sculpted by sound engineers, and many such sounds derive entirelyfrom computers. Music has become increasingly remote from performance.

Stan Godlovitch in his unique book, Musical Performance, addresses thisrelatively recent phenomenon. He examines the musical enterprise not fromthe usual vantage point of the composer or the audience, but from that of theperformer. Playing traditions go back many centuries, largely because whatplayers use, particularly in classical music, has not changed significantly inthat time. Many musicians still strike strings, blow through pipes, or poundstretched membranes, all of which involve immediate physical contact withthe sound source. This physical immediacy belongs with any traditional craftin demanding refined physical skill. Much of musical tradition has beenconservatively devoted to the development and achievement of physical masteryto serve expressive ends. And much of the value in music has derived from thevery depth of technical and expressive skill certain players have reachedespecially their ability to display it then and there to attentive listeners.

These traditions have been challenged by electronic technology which hasmade live human performance seem a mere transfer medium. After developinga full model of traditional performance, the book asks how well performanceproper has stood up, and where (if anywhere) its unique value lies.

Stan Godlovitch is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Lincoln University, NewZealand.

MUSICALPERFORMANCE

A philosophical study

Stan Godlovitch

London and New York

iv

First published 1998by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

1998 Stan Godlovitch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Godlovitch, Stanley, 1947Musical performance: a philosophical study / Stan Godlovitch.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Music-Philosophy and aesthetics. 2. Music-Performance.ML3845.G6 1998 9811832

781.4`3`0121 CIP MN

ISBN (hbk) 0-415-19128-9ISBN (pbk) 0-415-19129-7

ISBN 0-203-02562-8 Master e-book ISBNISBN 0-203-21894-9 (Glassbook Format)

v

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1Central themes 1Performance and the aesthetics of music 2The contents surveyed 3Unfinished business 7

PART ICentral aspects of performance 9

1 A model of musical performance 11Introduction 11Preliminary groundclearing 12Constituents of performance 13Taking stock 49

2 Skills and Guilds 52Introduction 52Part I: Skills, primary causes, and primary crafts 53Part II: The Guild tradition 61

PART IIChallenges to the model 79

3 Performances and musical works 81Introduction 81Improvisation and score-guided playing 83

CONTENTS

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Fidelity, musicality, and instantiation 84The fixity of the work 85Underdetermination 86Musical instantiation as invited variety 88Is performance necessary? 90Making the type: performing as story-telling 91

4 Computers, readymades, and artistic agency 97Introduction 97Two challenges to agency 97Challenging primary causation: indirect causation 98Challenging skill: readymades 104

5 Experiments with musical agency 109Introduction 109Preliminaries 110Quasi-readymade experimental performance 111

6 Artists, programs, and performance 125Introduction 125The simulation setting 126How the simulators work 128Performance and the artworld 130Blindfold tests 133How competitions are judged 135Performers as persons 138Epilogue 143

Notes 145Bibliography 159Index 167

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Portions of the following papers have found their way into this essay: MusicPerformance and the Tools of the Trade, Iyyun (1990) 39:32138; Artists,Computer Programs, and Performance, Australasian Journal of Philosophy(1990) 68:30112; MusicWhat to Do About It, Journal of AestheticEducation (1992) 26:115; The Integrity of Musical Performance, Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1993) 54:57387; and Innovation andConservatism in Performance Practice, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,(1997) 55:15168. For kind permission to make use of this material, I thankthe editors and the journals.

Among friends and colleagues, special thanks are owed to Steven DeHaven,Shmuel Keshen, Tom Leddy, David Novitz, and Eddy Zemach for commentsand discussion. For helpful suggestions on the manuscript, I am grateful toAlex Neill and Aaron Ridley. Far and away the most substantial philosophicaldebt of gratitude I owe to John H.Brown, Stephen Davies, and Jerry Levinsonfor their patience, encouragement, indulgence, and ever-thoughtful reflections.

And, as for Glen and Danielwell, it goes without saying.

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INTRODUCTION

Central themes

Music is a performing art. Music is made. So much our long-standing musicaltraditions take for granted. What these conceptions of music imply and howour traditions fare in the face of modern challenges are main themes in thisessay. As a focus, I offer an idealized model of the complete performancewhich comprises a complex network of relations linking together musicians,musical activities, works, listeners, and performance communities. Throughthis model, I aim to make explicit the interactive features of the totalperformance environment. The richness of the performance environment givesprominence to a number of issues. Very generally:

performance merits as much philosophical attention as has been showntoward musical ontology (the metaphysical aspect), the expressive contentand meaning of musical sound (the affective and semantic aspect), and thelisteners experience (the phenomenological aspect);

by taking seriously the integrated workings of the performance environment,ones sympathy increases for the view that art and art-making travel together;

musical performance provides an interesting framework for broaderphilosophical concerns about action; notably about intention, purposive-ness,skill, communication, and creativity.

More specifically, I aim to show that: performance in a primary idealized sense is represented most aptly as a

highly intricate event comprising players, sounds, works and listeners in aritual setting;

performance, as it has historically evolved, belongs squarely within thecraft tradition as a professional practice governed by inherently conservativestandards of manual skill and expertise. These standards are staunchly sustainedand applied by a performance practice community which emulates many ofthe regulatory powers and obligations of the Guild tradition;

tradition has exemplified music as that which is presented in and throughperformance;

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the ritual aspects of performance and the hierarchical structure ofperformance communities explain the tendency of performance practitionersand their audiences to resist otherwise serious challenges to performancetraditions brought on by new technology and experimentalism in music.

The traditional view of music as a performing art guided by the performerscraft, however consistent, may no longer faithfully represent the general musicalenterprise. Though some experimental options have arisen through theinfluence of changes in other artforms, the most significant alternatives totradition have come from technology, especially the development of electronicand computer-based sound-processing machines. Such technology, which canneither be ignored by nor absorbed within the traditional structure, signalsmajor changes to come in our conception of music and performance. Certainly,developments in electronic sound-making technology already give theimpression that the tradition of performance as a skilled manual craft occupies,at best, one amongst a plurality of musical options for the production anddisplay of sound.

Performance and the aesthetics of music

For some time now, two primary factors have marked much of Western artmusic; namely, (1) composing, or the creation of musical works, and (2)performing, or the presentation of such works in sound. For a millennium,composing has involved registering created works in replicable notated scoreswhich represent certain elemental features of the work. Besides being mediafor the storage of works, scores are also instruction sets for their presentationin sound. Performing makes works accessible to the ear through the physicalactivity of musicians who typically work initially from score. A third factor, (3)listening or audition, is the active apprehension of sounds in performance.Composition, performance, and audition are functionally and physicallyseparable, and often attach to three distinct sets of participantscomposers,musicians, and audiences. In music studies, the division into theory and analysis,performance practice, and ear-training and appreciation reflect these functionalcompartments.

Each of these three factors is indispensable. Music is an art of structuringsound for display in sound. The designers of musical structures, the presentersof musical sound, and the recipients of those displayed structures all play inter-dependent roles in our musical culture. One person busy in all three enterprisesconceivably constitutes a self-sufficient (albeit minimal) musical community,but no musical community lacks any one of these factors. Any comprehensivemusical aesthetic must attend equally to the creation and nature of musicalworks, the making and displaying of musical sound, and the experience ofmusic made.

Though these three components defy complete separation, independenttreatment of one or another is often a practical necessity and a theoretical

INTRODUCTION

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convenience. The tripartite division of musical labour reinforces theattractiveness of such separate treatment. Each approach emphasizes specializedproblems and interests. For instance, concern about musical works, thecomposers sphere, prompts discussion about their ontology, their essenceand formal structure, how they are represented, and how they relate toperformance.1 Those partial to performance, the practising musicians domain,attend primarily to such issues as virtuosity, improvisation, the nature and roleof the act of playing, what the performer owes to the composer, the work, andthe works historical context, and what the performance does with the work.2

Concern about sound, the listeners sphere, raises questions about the contentand meaning of music, expression, affect, representation in music, musicalappreciation and understanding, and the listeners response.3

Performance can become inadvertently minimized in focused approachesby assigning to it a merely subservient role or neglecting its influence altogether.Work-centred accounts may treat performance purely functionally as merelyone means to reveal the work in sound, thus reducing it to a kind of messengermediating between composer and listener. More formal accounts of worksmay portray performances as simply token instances of the work type whileunderes-timating the significant fact that works massively underdetermine theirperformances. Listener-based accounts may leave the impression that theimmediate cause of the experienced sound is incidental both to its expressivequalities and to a full musical appreciation of it. Such accounts often treatmusical sound as a purely disembodied phenomenon, a private sensuous arrayfor the auditor however informed the listener about the context of creationof the work. We may open up such tightly framed perspectives by remindingourselves of the near platitude that music is a performing art, an attributionwhich is surely central to musical tradition. Of course, that music, unlike danceand drama, is not necessarily a performing art turns out to be an intriguing ifunsettling discovery of our own time.

The contents surveyed

Though this essay falls into two parts, its structure is not strictly linear. Part Iis a relatively self-contained core around which selected satellite themes andproblems orbit in Part II.

In Part I, Central aspects of performance , an idealized model of traditionalperformance is elaborated. At the risk of stressing a metaphor, Part I exploresthe ecology of performance. Although grounded on various common intuitionsabout performance, the model emphasizes the richness of the performanceenvironment and the complex interconnectedness of its constituents. Theconception which emerges constitutes a model of a model performance, so tospeak, one in which all the overt and tacit conventions are fully realized.

Part II, Challenges to the model , considers various ways in which theprimacy of traditional performance in music may seem to be ignored, defied

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or threatened. I look at various recent innovations in the visual arts as well asexperimental and computer-based music. Although these challenges fail todamage the models internal coherence or show it to be inconsistent, they doexpose the traditions behind it as ever more local. Such traditions are perhapsbest viewed as sturdy historical monuments increasingly forced to share spacewith newer, taller, leaner structures.

Part I, Central aspects of performance , represents performance as avalue-driven, value-laden, communicative exercise of specialized manual skill.It is characterized as governed by powerful historical conventions of trainingand expertise. These conventions are established and internally regulated byperformance communities, the structure and organization of which aredetermined by long-standing inherited norms. The idealized model inChapter 1, A model of musical performance , draws upon the Socratictheme of techne and presents performance as an agent-centred intentionalenterprise which invokes special skills to create musical experiences forattentive listeners. At the hub of musical enterprise, performance is portrayedas a complex network of relations connecting musical agents, works, sound,and listeners. These relations range from purely structural ones to normativeones, in which the obligations of performers and listeners figure. The modelis meant to make explicit the many interwoven factors in the performanceenvironment and bonds these together under a single conception ascomponents of performance itself. Among its less intuitive aspects, the modelrequires that performances have third-party attentive listeners. In this andother ways, the model attempts to lay out optimal success conditions forperformance.

Chapter 1 concentrates on the immediate environment of performance inprogress; that is, the setting and circumstance of performance events especiallyas they define the relationship between player, sound, work, and listener.Chapter 2, Skills and Guilds , casts a wider net and explores the mechanismsand institutions of performance practice by placing the player within the contextof standing performance communities. Performance is a highly structuredpractice essentially built upon and employing task-related primary manualskills. The value in and of performance thus depends not only on the music asmade, but on the way in which it is made. The requirement and refinement ofmusical skill is the glue binding musicians to performance communities. Astrong kinship is established between performance practice and the crafttradition in their common emphasis upon skill acquisition and training. Thisconcept of performance as craftwork leads to an examination of the professionalcommunities and institutions which promote and regulate the music-makingenterprise. Performance communities share much in common with trade andprofessional guilds which regulate their membership through traditionallyestablished common standards and highly structured hierarchies ofaccomplishment. Central to the preservation of performance ideals is theperfectionism characteristic of the craft tradition generally. Because the

INTRODUCTION

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performance community is highly protective of its norms and goals, it tendsto react conservatively to any suggestions for change.

Part II, Challenges to the model , looks at problems for the model fromthe vantage point of alternative musical possibilities. Five central features ofperformance developed in Part I involve the place of the musical work, primaryagency, the craft tradition, intentional agency, and the performing context. InPart II, these features are confronted with alternative conceptions of whatprincipally counts in music, and more interestingly, with newly and potentiallyavailable non-traditional options for performance. The core features challengedare these:

the musical workperformance, far from being simply a faithful deliveryof goods from composers to their listeners, is an active collaborative constituentof the full work itself. The notation typically available to musicians is a meremusical framework;

direct causation (primary agency)performance involves the direct,immediate, physical causation of sound by an agent;

the craft traditionprimary skill and traditions of expertise are essentialto performance, and integral to our regard for music-making;

intentional agencyperformance is essentially an intentional activity; morepointedly, an activity characteristic of beings with typically human cognitiveand affective constitutions;

the performing contextthe musical sounds created by a performer donot exhaust the full content of the performance which also comprises thepresence, activity, and manner of the performer.

Chapter 3, Performances and musical works , considers the view that,because performers are principally musical brokers fulfilling a contract betweencomposers and listeners, performance is properly subordinate to the musicalwork it delivers. Although part of the sentiment behind this derives from aromanticized form of composer (or authenticity) worship, a more formalelement plays a part; namely, that the work is to its performances as a type is toa token of that type, or a universal is to one of its particular instances. Thisformal view creates an asymmetry of independence and autonomy betweenworks and performances. In countering this conception, Chapter 3 takesseriously the significance of the fact that works underdetermine theirperformances. In considering different forms of instantiation, the view emergesthat, far from being subordinate to works, performances operate at least incollaboration with the notated frameworks, and, like elaborations of stories,help create the works themselves in that collaboration.

Chapter 4, Computers, readymades, and artistic agency , examines verygenerally the effect of computers and of readymades on primary causationand on the skill and crafting traditions. The decline of primary agency haslargely been due to the use of indirect, non-manual, abstract causal processesepito-mized in electronic and computer-based graphics and music. Whenprimary causationphysically immediate art-makingis thus displaced,

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conceptions of art and, with it, performance undergo major change. Computer-based artforms are generically distinct and unify sound and colour as merelydifferent manifestations of information, their common substrate. Both primarycausation and traditionally valued manual techniques were upset by thereadymades introduced by Marcel Duchamp. The implications created by thereadymade for the traditional link between art-making and technique areexplored. There it is argued that when skill is acceptably absent, many value-regulating mechanisms must be abandoned. To survive, the artform may makesuch adjustments and detach artistic value from technical accomplishment.Though this has occurred in the plastic arts, nothing quite like it has takenplace in music.

Chapter 5, Experiments with musical agency , looks more closely atintentional agency and the performing context. Emulating selected readymadethemes, certain musical experiments have aimed to rid music-making of thecentrality of primary agency and the expertise of the crafts. These experimentsaffect both the presentation of music and the hegemony of performancecommunities. The varieties of experimental music discussed include eventpieces, found sound, and chance music. I consider whether such experimentalmusic constitutes another musical form in its own right, forces performancecommunities to re-cast their traditional foundations, or must answer to, andpossibly fail, traditional norms. I conclude that, despite their undoubted impactupon conceptions of composition and music generally, these modernexperiments have little effect on the standard notion of performance and leaveit much where it has been. Far from upsetting the prominence of establishedperformance traditions, much experimental music has not quite freed itselffrom them; and, where it has, it ceases to be performance music altogether.That said, such experiments leave much in doubt the centrality of traditionalperformance to the music enterprise generally.

The final chapter, Artists, programs, and performance , uses a thoughtexperiment to question the necessity of human intentional agency inperformance. Computer programs currently exist which compose music, andwhich produce reasonably convincing pieces in the styles of the past. One canimagine a computer-driven performance machine which takes notation as inputand generates unique, imaginative, and musically convincing renditions ofstandard repertoireso convincing that they cannot be distinguished fromthose of accomplished human performers. Such machines would first analysethe interpretive techniques of great human players, and eventually woulddevelop their own individual performance stylesfunctionally, much as humansdo in learning new skills. At some stage, these machine performances willimpress listeners as much as any fine performance. Consider a competitionamongst such performance machines. Could a completely program-drivenmusic competition eventually supplant human contests without aesthetic lossmuch along the lines of machine chess competitions? Whatever thetechnological success, I argue that the traditional object of apprehension and

INTRODUCTION

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judgement involves much more than the mere sound experienced by thelistener, and indeed, more than the nexus of constituents making up the modeldeveloped in Part I. The chapter ends with a sketch of an enriched complex ofconventions and expectations which underwrite our experience andappreciation of performing artists as persons. These conventions andexpectations draw not only upon primary skills and practice traditions butalso upon the messy, diffuse context of human ability, fallibility, personality,choice, and growth. From our appreciation of these very general aspects ofthe kinds of creatures we are comes the value we currently identify in rigour,skill, and creativity. Thus embedded culturally and psychologically, performanceturns out to be seamlessly continuous with human pursuits generally. Peculiarly,though, the more the player is like the rest of us, the more we can value themusic made; and yet the more extraordinary the performance, the more wevalue the player.

Unfinished business

The essay raises issues wanting further treatment. Five areas wanting discussionare: (1) the implications for ontology, (2) the primacy of performance, (3)creativity and invention in improvisation and score-playing, (4) the nature ofinterpretation, and (5) the implications of recording studio techniques.Regarding (1), I could profit from a distinction between compositions orframe-works and works proper. The former are given to us by composers andare usually in score, while the latter are what performers collaboratively createin performance in using compositions. In this sense, performers contribute inmaking the musical work which is, necessarily, underdetermined by itscomposition. This distinction requires much development. I flirt with it inChapter 3. As to (2), I think performance not merely central to our tradition,but essential to any tradition which sustains anything like the framework/work distinction just mentioned. In some electronic music, the distinction allbut collapses. In that music, performance fails to figure. Because electronicmusic will eventually carry most of our musical business, greater heed willhave to be paid to the hegemony of music as a sound art. With (3) is raised thewhole question of the dispensability of compositions and notated works as weknow them. Improvisational traditions boost performance stock by giving theperformer greater discretion and creative opportunity than the score-guidedplayer has. Properly speaking, any paradigm of primary performance shouldbe founded upon improvisational traditions. Whether our score-dominatedmusical culture is a performance compromise, an equal but distinct alternative,or an equal member of the same paradigm deserves further treatment.Regarding (4), interpretation merits expansive treatment in itself. Forconvenience, I conceive interpretations as procedural operations whichrepresent technical and expressive options for presenting passages, often inkeeping with practice conventions. Interpretive moves are standardly concerned

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with expressive potential and how best to realize it. Interpretation seemsprimarily linked with a musicians concern about achieving certain determinateacoustic effects and the best means to do so. That said, what it is aboutcompositions which qualifies them as bearers of musical interpretations at all,and as bearers of certain proper interpretations in particular needs clarification,especially if one cannot appeal to anything semantic or quasi-linguistic. Finally,(5) the recording studio has transformed performance and audiences alongwith it, much as film and television have spirited away theatre and given usoddly captivating ghosts. Why have we been so willing, so eager to swap realpeople in real time and space for engineered traces? Whatever we have lost,ever so much more seems to have been gained, given our preferences. Someonemust soon do an aesthetic audit.

Part I

CENTRAL ASPECTS OFPERFORMANCE

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1 A MODEL OF MUSICAL

PERFORMANCE

Introduction

What is the nature of musical performance? Intuitively, performances areoccasions of musical soundmusical eventsintentionally brought about bymusicians for listeners. More abstractly, they are conceived formally as instancesor tokens of certain universals or kinds; namely, musical works. In this chapter,I outline a model of performance which reflects and yet complements variousintuitive considerations. I also aim to build sympathy for a performance-centredconception of music, the overall plan being to epitomize a tradition of music-making.

Why focus thus on performance? Music, after all, has many facets. Theactivities of composers, musicians, and listeners, and, by association, the works,performances, and experienced sounds of music, offer different perspectivesfrom which to view music. Still, music is characteristically classified as aperforming art. Since music typically lives in and for its public sounds whichderive from performance, there is reason enough to regard the musicalenterprise generally from the performance standpoint. More strongly, if musicis essentially a performing art, the performance perspective is clearly privileged.

Four primary constituents of the musical sphere are typically drawn togetherin performance: sound, agents, works,1 and listeners. Plausibly, any standardperformance consists of sounds made by some musician instancing somemusical work for some listener. These four factors will clearly figure in anymodel of performance.

Ordinary language embodies a concept of performance more relaxed thanthe model to be proposed. While respectful of the intuitive view, the emergingpicture brings to the foreground certain otherwise understated intentionaland contextual factors affecting performers and listeners. The resulting modelis thus more determinate than some intuitions about performance; for example,in requiring the presence of attentive audiences and properly informedmusicians. Further, the model outlines a cluster of success conditions forperformance, the realization of which constitutes an idealized paradigm ofmusic-making. Rather than assembling a stereotype which faithfully mirrors

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what would ordinarily count as an acceptable performance, the model depictsthe fully successful or exemplary performance. That successful performanceserves as an analytical benchmark derives in part from the sense of achievementinternal to descriptions like: Williams performed the Giuliani Concerto Opus30 in Jasper, Alberta on January 2nd. Such expressions imply not merelysomething undertaken, but something fully completed or accomplished. Note,the notion fully successful does not here connote the highest levels ofindividual accomplishment captured in expressions like exceptional ordefinitive performance which mark a given occasion as superior to most others.The success conditions outlined in my account are meant to heightenconceptual undercurrents which are often implicit in standing conventionsand discourse. From this idealization emerges a model of the modelperformance, cleaner at the edges than real life, against which one can assessones typical expectations.

I focus on solo performance not only for its relative simplicity but becauseof its ultimacy. Analyses of ensemble performance derive directly from orcontrast with it. Solo performance, broadly conceived, covers cases where oneperformers musical decisions and actions predominate. With fully collaborativeensembles like string quartets, one may conceivably postulate a supra-individualperformer, the quartet, to facilitate attributions of global sound quality aswell as global praise since each quartet player is equally responsible for thejoint venture.

Again, for simplicity, I emphasize instrumental music-making throughout.Instrumental music counts for much of music-making, and the separatenessof musical agents and their instruments brings into high relief aspects of physicalchallenge and control which will figure strongly in the account. Further, thepresence of language and meaning in song would needlessly complicate thepicture presented of what music-makers must accomplish at a very primarylevel of agency. Even if song were historically prior to instrumental music, thelatter is constitutionally prior, so to speak, by being semantically leaner. Evenif instrumental music were not analytically more primitive than song, songverges, at least in comparison, towards the mixed media, blending melodyand poetry or melody and narrative. That said, the voice can be and is usedpurely to make musical sound. When so used, my account applies fully tovoice.

Preliminary groundclearing

Performance falls within a family of music-making activities. While generalterms like work, piece, and number, standardly attach to whole items ofmusic, another group of terms typically describes general music-making activity;for example, play, perform, and execute (and, relatedly, performance,and execution). These last verbs differ in various ways. We can draw adistinction in level between playing and performing.

A MODEL OF MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

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Playing refers to more general and generic activity than the more specializedand formal performing. Though every case of performing involves playing,one may succeed in playing without having succeeded in performing.Performing invokes occasion and ritual; playing leaves such contextualimputations open. Sight-reading for amusement, say, is also playing but notperforming in most cases. Playing neutrally captures occasions of creatingmusical sound. Performing applies more restrictedly as a species of playing.

Performing is not the sole species under the genus playing. Besides sight-reading, one may rehearse, practise, jam, noodle, and so on. These too aremore determinate than playing, and distinct from performing. Terms likeconcert, recital, and show typically relate to relatively prominentperformance occasions. Rehearsal, practice session and jam session denoteless formal episodes. Performances tend to be special ritualized occasions,considerably more constrained than rehearsals, practice, or recreational playing.For present purposes, I will take the familiar recital as a standard performancesetting.

Perform and performance have both singular and general uses. Singularuses include Paganini performed the Tarantella just once, and Theperformance tonight of Brandenburg III starts at 8pm sharp. The generaluse occurs in Performance of Finlandia strengthened the peoples resolve toresist the enemy, and Among other instruments, ODette performs on cittern.Performance occasionally means recital, show, or concert; for example,The matinee performance has been cancelled: while perform relatesanalogously to a general manner of playing; for example, He performed withbravura last night. In what follows, performance is not used synonymouslywith recital or concert. Instead, individual performances in the senseintended attach to individual works rather than designated venues.

Constituents of performance

As mentioned, performances draw together sounds, agents, works, andlisteners. Each of these occupies a role within performance, and collectivelythey comprise the large, complex, integrated events which performances are.I shall examine these critical constituents and indicate how they are woventogether in successful performance.

Sound sequences

Every performance necessarily has sound as a constituent, but no sequence ofsounds, considered purely as sound, constitutes a performance. Still, claimslike: I heard a performance of Brittens Nocturnal last night, suggest thatperformance can be viewed exhaustively as an object of hearing. Supposeperformance in the claim refers just to a temporally-bounded ordered set ofsounds which fall under a physical-acoustical description involving a

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transmission medium, sound waves, and wave qualities like frequency andamplitude. Although the sequence presumably was deliberately caused by somehuman, this forms no explicit part of the reference. But, can the description ofa performance fail to coincide with any description of any musical activity?

Surely acoustic properties alone are insufficient to enable one to identify,let alone adequately constitute, any performance, even if such ingredients areelementally required. If there were a music of the spheresperfect oscillationsof cosmic crystalsthe very detachment of the sound from any obvious agentwould disqualify it as a performance. It would be space noise, however melo-dious. More dully, one cannot differentiate through sound alone the musicplayers create and the non-musical tappings of their shoes while playing it,both of which co-exist and result from the movements of their body. To identifyperformances one must supplement sound sequences by reference to worksand performers at least.

Attributing self-sufficiency to sound sequences rests on the odd notionthat performances can be identified and characterized independently of playersand works. What inspires such a belief?

Recordings might influence such views because of the temptation to saythat they capture performances proper rather than mere performance sound.This, however, involves an uncritical assimilation of dissimilar paradigms. Manycreative activitiesfor instance, painting, cooking, sculpting, writing, lute-makingyield independent and independently identifiable results. Theseactivities result in moveable, saleable, collectable things which live independentlives and often outlive their creators. Recordings share these features and mayinfluence conceptions of performance on analogy with the detachability andautonomy of paintings.

Recordings of performances, however, are not performances. Recordings arejust traces or records of performances, and no more performances in their ownright than photos are the objects photographed. The temptation to neglect thislikely stems from the stunning excellence of the resemblance, and its often capturingeverything that certain parties are concerned with in the original, while dispensingwith the seeming side-effects of live music-making. Common idioms aremisleading. Having heard a recording or taped broadcast of the C# Minor Prelude,one typically remarks: I heard a performance of the C# Minor Prelude last night.But if the performer is dead, to say: I heard Rachmaninoff perform his C# MinorPrelude last night is awkward, surely, because literally false.

Performances are essentially events. That alone should make clear theirdifference from discrete, independent physical objects. Performance soundceases with the cessation of its generative source, the activity of music-making,and hence is causally dependent upon that source. Even if some sound outlaststhe activity (through echo, say), the entire performance cannot outlive all theactivity. Most performance sounds overlap with the sound-making. Cause andeffect here travel together. Such is not true of detachable, transportable thingslike paintings.


15

One may be tempted to reify musical sound if one supposes that auditoryexperience captures all that is musically significant. One may close ones eyesat a concert the better to absorb the music. So some listeners believe. But thissays less about sound exhausting the musical significance in a performancethan it does about the psychological means through which sound may beappreciated and savoured by certain music consumers.

If musical sound alone is not sufficient for performance, perhaps sound isnot necessary either. John Cage wrote 433? to make this very point. Lastingfour minutes and thirty-three seconds, 433? involves pure silence and yetcalls for everything else normally featured in performanceperformers,instruments, audiences, venues. Each of the three sections of 433? is markedTACET. 433? is meant for any instrument, and was premiered by DavidTudor in Woodstock, New York, 29 August 1952. Tudor, at the piano,indicated the duration of each section by opening and closing the keyboardcover.

Does Cage merit serious regard? Cage purportedly used 433? to stress theequal importance of sound and silence in music. Most pieces contain elementsof both; but some, like perpetual motion pieces, contain just sound. Whydeny musical status to a work consisting of pure silence? If this is the mainpoint of 433? it seems a silly analogue to a sight gag. Imagine a culinarycousin, a gourmets delight called Holes which consists of an empty foldednapkin served with fresh coffee. The message: to stress the equal importanceof air and solids in doughnuts. Some doughnuts, the ones with holes, containelements of both, while others, jelly doughnuts, contain just solids. Why denyculinary status to doughnuts emphasizing pure air? Ignoring general worriesabout the nature of art, it is questionable whether 433? is even a musicalwork.2 If it is not, then performing it cannot be a musical performance. Thatshould caution us against taking it centrally into account.

Most pertinently, 433? only works in contrast against a prior paradigminvolving sound. Pieces like 433? could never be musically typical.

Musical agency

Four aspects of agency are pertinent to performance: causation, intention,skill, and intended audiences. Below, I elaborate upon the claim that musicalperformances are activities brought about by human agents with certain abilitiesand with certain intentions about their activities and beneficiaries.

Causation: making music happen

As events, performances have causes, but performances, clearly, are not mereoccurrences, but actions undertaken by agents. As such, performance pointsboth to its origin and purpose. The cause of musical performance is standardlysome human being.

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That said, we talk comfortably about the performance of machines. Takengenetically, human and machine performances share certain features.Consideration of machine performance involves attention to specifications,statistics, and ratings. The specifications and statistics describe what the machinecan do under given conditions relative to an assigned task, while the ratingstell us how well it operates relative to other machines. Isaac performed theChaconne, describes at least what Isaac did. He caused the Chaconne to besounded. Isaacs performance rating: He did it well, given the pressure.

Similarities fade once individuality enters. Isaac gave a startlingly originalperformance of the Chaconne, departs from shop talk. Machines are often ofvalue only if they are reliably replicable, and instances of a particular line aredesigned to be uniformly reliable and interchangeable in their job. Though Imay admire the performance of my particular vacuum cleaner, I do not expectmore than uniform reliability and, discounting sentimental attachments, amhappy to replace it with another which performs as well. From humanperformance we customarily expect distinctiveness which, as a norm, is notbuilt into machine performance. Much musical performance thrives on thevirtues of unique variety and the unexpected by design which are characteristicsof creative, that is, anthropoid, agency.

Musical performance is typically a humanly caused sound sequence. Sincehumans usually make such sound with certain instruments (including voice),one may expand this with using some specified musical instrument.

Do player pianos give performances? To eliminate such prospects, one mayappeal to the lack of intention in such devices.3 Although intention figures inany paradigm of performance, one may rule out the player piano on othergrounds. Player pianos are merely playback devices and so more like record,CD, and tape players than they are like paradigm performers. The roll ormagnetic insert functions like a tape or CD. The only difference is the outputmechanism. Whether or not the roll played back was punched out by an actualhuman performance is incidental. The pianola does not interpret its roll. Thechanges in any sequences of playings can be explained by appeal to determinableenvironmental changes; for example, the roll is worn in parts, there was aslight power surge, a hammer stuck, etc. What counts is who or what createdthe roll in the first place. Sound-making devices which actually perform mustmeet certain elemental causal conditions which player pianos lack; that is,they must programme their own renditions.

Intention: the performers plan

Performances are deliberate, intentionally caused sound sequences. They arenever involuntary like sneezes, nor accidental or inadvertent. A person, unawareof a certain piece, who plays something sounding just like it by casually runninga bow across a cello could only generously be said to have performed thatpiece. Such a person could not claim the credit that is normally due to one


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who has given a performance. The intention to perform and beliefs about theimmediate context are integral to performance.

What do performers intend in causing sound? Roughly, one intends tocause a certain sound sequence with certain qualities at a certain time. (Worksand means also figure, though reference to them here needlessly complicatesmatters.) Generally, one intends to play well, to meet and even exceed certainstandards of proficiency. Time and circumstance may frustrate ones desires.Delays in opening occur as do mistakes in execution. Sometimes fortune smileswhen things go as, or even better than, one had wished. Players surprisethemselves occasionally with spontaneous expressiveness.

Questions about certain performance details reflect upon intention andprior planning; for example, Did you really want such a big diminuendo inmeasure 15, to slow down that much in bar 22?, to employ such a brittlesound in the repeat?. Highly deliberate, self-monitoring players may answerthese confidently. Others may not. Some may hold false beliefs about theirperformance until tapes or reviews set the record straight. Ones performingintentions may be more or less rich depending upon ones preparatorydeliberations. Performance may be pre-planned down to microscopic details,or run more thinly on rough-hewn notions of overall effect. Whatever thedegree of pre-planning, performers must have some notion about the desiredoutcome, some relatively determinate conception of their intended sound.

One cannot have a plan so thin it regulates virtually nothing; for example,the intention to play some sounds or other. This is to renounce all plans,rather like answering Breathe, eat, and sleep in response to What do youplan to do with your life?. In such cases, it cannot matter what sound onecauses. In performing it always matters. What of very thin plans; for example,just to cause this sound sequence? Though possibly appropriate in practice asone gears up to conquer technical obstacles, such thinness is at best preparatoryonly. In itself, it promises nothing of musical interest. Should musical interestarise, it does so arbitrarily and incidentally. Of course, we must exclude casesof apparent thinness, where the players past experience and knowledge operatetacitly in the background. There is a minimal thinness of plan below whichperformance proper either fails completely or fails to get going at the outset.

To perform is to intentionally generate and to regulate the generation ofsome sound sequence. Such regulatory intentions shape the sound by makingcertain effects happen. They also comprise a normative template which informsthe player how well the performance is going and how it went. Without suchtemplates, no performance ranking is possible. Individuals commonly ranktheir own performances, not necessarily by audience response, but byconformity to their own ideals. Though one may achieve this conformity byluck, one cannot consistently so achieve it.

That performers must adopt a plan of action against which the relativesuccess of a certain caused sound sequence is assessed suggests that performancehas both intrinsic as well as instrumental value. By this I mean that value

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attaches not only to the results one achieves, but also to how they are achieved.The value of many purposive activities resides almost exclusively in the externalresults achieved. So, the value of gold mining derives from the gold recovered,and not from the exercise of mining itself.

On this simplified analysis, performance intentions are, in many ways,personal since they involve performers creating and satisfying their ownstandards of achievement. External regulations exist, however, which flowfrom the performers regard for the listener, the work being performed and itsperformance traditions, the performers immediate performance community,and the formal rituals and institutions of performance like the recital, concerttour, conservatory juries and so on. These public matters are taken up later.

Skill: agency refined

The causal path from intended sound to the sound itself cannot be haphazard.Causing the sound one intends to cause requires control over ones actionsand the instruments of action. The mark of full control is being able to causethe sound one intends when one will, and to do with the sound as one will.Naturally, while being in full control does not presuppose being infallibly incontrol, such control does presuppose a high degree of reliability.

One major indicator of control is the power to cause repeatedly at will certainintended sound sequences reliably and consistently. Duplicating a result at willminimizes the influence of luck. Duplicating also minimizes the uncer-taintythat ones success rides on hidden facilitating factors which are randomized outby repetition. The greater the variety of circumstances under which one canreplicate ones planned actions, the greater ones control over them. The powerto duplicate results increases our confidence about future success just as do anyreliably confirmed regularities. (On analogy with experiment design andhypothesis testing, the greater the number of varying conditions under which agiven prediction is confirmed, the greater the degree of confidence we have inthe hypothesis from which the prediction flows. Skill and verisimilitude arekindred.) This consistently reliable ability to cause sound to match onesintentions is one mark of dependable control, commonly known as skill.

Is skill required in performance? Having skill and knowing that one hasskill allow one to predict with some accuracy the likelihood of succeeding atcausing certain intended sounds. If players chronically lacked confidence intheir power to realize on call a musical plan in sound few would perform.Otherwise, what point could there be in formulating musical plans, announcingthem in public, while wondering all the while whether any of this would orcould be realized? The only way to satisfy desires to make music is by acquiringthe skill to do so.

Being a performer involves the ability to produce and re-produce certainresults on call. Skill is not required for each performance but is surelyconstitutionally and professionally necessary for musicians. Musicians lacking


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skill will enjoy short musical careers as do those who lose skill through inactivity.A person lacking enough skill for a certain repertoire may, at best, luckilyperform it passably, once, possibly twice. Though one can have skill withoutexercising it, no skilled player would deliberately forsake that skill. One mayperform as if one had never played the work previously, but this itself requiresthe skilled contrivance of a Victor Borge. Performers count on their skill,evidence for which they accumulate in practice and rehearsal. Performancecan thus be described as the human causing of certain intended soundsequences with skill.

The links between skill and physical causation, and where skill fits inperformance communities and traditions are explored later. Here I will canvassa few matters of immediate concern.

An initial point: if skill hangs on willed repetition, can skill be manifest in asingle unrepeated episode? Listeners do not withhold attributions of skill justbecause they have heard a performer only once. Listeners, however, may notcare whether skill is truly present so long as their experience has been satisfying.The so-called skill they admire may just be their appreciation of that performerseffect upon them. Still, would-be listeners count on skill as outlined. Theyassume the performer has preparation enough to fulfil the promise of aperformance.

Suppose a performer successfully tries something new, thus creating theexcitement of an improvisation.4 Is this not an exercise of skill? Yes, but thenovelty here may mislead somewhat. Much that happens usually depends uponexercising already entrenched skills in a new context. So, a players establishedskills at linking intricate chord sequences and interweaving musical quotationsmay be applied in certain melodic contexts, the outcome of which isunexpected. The skills remain as ever. Sometimes where great risk is taken (forexample, pressing the tempo or wandering into distant harmonic regions),talk of skill may be inappropriate. Some musicians may think themselves luckyat having survived intact. The next time, however, counts differently.

Perhaps we should distinguish between having a skill and acting skilfully.Using the latter to mean acting as one with skill would act, we reserve judgementabout the full attribution of skill. Acting skilfully is evidencenot necessarilyconclusiveof skill. Performers tend to be conservative. They often need moreconvincing as to their skills than one skilful (possibly just lucky) break.

A second concern is that skill is usually associated with the ability to performrelatively difficult tasks. The account above ignores this and seems consistentwith saying that blowing my nose is a skill just because I can do it repeatedlyat will.

Skills are essentially bound up with challenges. Any analysis of skill mustcapture the sense of overcoming some challenge and the value assigned toovercoming it as a result of the exercise of skill. Challenges, ever relative tocircumstance, are contextualized difficulties. For those with shattered spinalcords, walking is a challenge, and walking gracefully a masterful skill. Any

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human activity may become a challenge. Mastering any activity can become askill for some group for whom the activity is a challenge and overcoming itreliably is a victory.

Skills arise relative to acknowledged limitations in means relative to endswhich, for convenience, I call handicaps. Chapter 2 examines conventionalmusic as relying in part on certain deliberate handicaps. I may withholdregarding something as a skill until I am aware of the handicaps. Certainhandicaps are institutionalized; for example, having to cut a clean dovetailjoint with a chisel in cabinet-making class even though using a power routerand jig is much easier. One can make a competition for any skill (arising froma challenge due to handicap), and thus establish ranks of accomplishment.

Others may attribute to one a skill even if one fails to appreciate it as a skillone has. The activity may seem to one altogether effortless. One feels nochallenge present and hence, has no sense of accomplishment. If one has alwaysfound mathematics easy, one may not think oneself endowed with mathematicalskills. Certain expressions almost underrate the mastery implied in skill bysomehow withholding full credit for certain abilities; for example, I may regardmyself as having an aptitude or flair for mathematics, or consider myself anatural. Perhaps it is best to say I have facility, skill without toil.5

Skills can be acknowledged without being admired. Some skills may impressus more because we admire the overcoming of certain handicaps more thanothers. We may admire a skill because we value the results it achieves, resultswe would like to achieve but cannot. We may derive pleasure just watchingsomeone overcome odds, however contrived they are. Even if such appreciationis wanting, one can acknowledge the skill in what one otherwise regards to bea pointless, violent, tasteless, immoral, or juvenile pursuit.

Music-making is skilful because human handicaps in manual (or glottal)dexterity and facility are plain, especially if one tries to imitate a virtuoso. Ourrespect for musicians stems largely from a regard for their musical skills. Ofcourse we admire talent, but talent without skill is like power without authorityunsteady, capricious, unreliable. Talent is the promise of high merit, given skill;facility, the blessing of skill without sweat. Though musicians and listeners alikemay be disillusioned by recklessly undeveloped talent, facility never disappoints.

The skills musicians value may not all impress non-participating admirersas they do their competitive colleagues in the musical community. Still, theexacting demands of the musical community seldom disappoint the listener.That said, the listener often cannot appreciate the many subtle nuancesmusicians employ to meet the critical expectations of their colleagues. Onemust satisfy not only the well-disposed and under-informed customer, butalso ones often ill-disposed and omniscient colleagues. Such overdeterminationof the goal typifies many skilled trades and crafts.

One remaining concern about intention is this: the more detailed onesintentions regarding the sound sequence, the greater the skill required inrealizing them. The more detailed my musical plan, the more ways it can fail.


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Overcoming greater risk of failure takes more skill than overcoming less. Butthis relativizes skill to ones intentions. Skill is surely a more objectivephenomenon. Further, regarding players who formulate loosely-structuredintentions while hoping for well-behaved spontaneous inspiration, the thinnessof the intention neither diminishes nor boosts their skill.

Given the connections between skills, challenges, handicaps, and partiesvaluing the overcoming of challenges under certain handicaps, the complaintthat skill is relativized to intention poses no worry. The objective quality of skillgrows precisely out of an assessment of the challenges involved in consistentlymeeting the task at hand given the impediments to it. The detailed intentioncase seems riskier but only because the task at hand is described in terms ofmeeting those very risks. Musicians with rich intentions can always create theirown challenges for their own undertakings. They may thus set up a skillacquisition race against themselves; for example, setting ever higher tempi for apiece which works well at a lower one. But their skill development plan cannotof itself be imposed as a benchmark against which the looser plan is measured.Rich and thin plans have no influence on assessments of relative skill requirementsif the task at hand is conceived more broadly. As it happens, technical andinterpretative conventions tend to be fairly spacious if not always broad-minded.

For example, instead of couching our goal as making the Chaconne soundprecisely thus (here follows a measure-by-measure interpretative schedule),we may set it as making the Chaconne sound sombre, noble, but serene. Thelatter, though less determinate than the former, may portray exactly what theformer aims to achieve. The methods employedrich or thin plansto achievethe end fade into the background so long as they are equally commensuratewith the commonly adopted challenges and handicaps.

Causal limits, primary skill, and creditworthiness

Performance agency raises issues not only about causality and skill, but alsoabout accountability and credit. Considering certain opportunities madeavailable by electronic technology, performance proper requires that a playerbe fully in a position to take credit for the performance. To do so, it is notsufficient that the appropriate sounds merely be causally related to theperformers musical activities. We also judge what we take the performanceexercise to exact fittingly from the player. Performances tend to be means-tested. They are activities the successful realization of which is in partdetermined by satisfying conditions attached to execution and the means ofexecution. Means-tested activities must not only reach specified ends but mustreach them under certain causal limits. Agents are thus accountable forobserving those limits. Concern about causal limits covers causal presenceinvolving the actual agents at work, and causal credit, or what the workingperformer really contributes to performance.

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Concerning causal presence, performers must be causally central in music-making. One can always ask whether the alleged performer is genuinely theimmediate cause of the performance. However seemingly gratuitous thedemand that a performance be immediately brought about by the performer,fraud and deception do occur. Consider the phenomena of playing air-guitarand lip-syncing. Ignoring cases where singers lip-sync their own pre-recordedvocals (the common practice in rock videos), air-guitarists and lip-syncers arenot guitarists or vocalists as such. When listeners are deliberately duped intobelieving that air-guitarists and lip-syncers are actually making the soundspresented, performance credit is violated. The call for causal presence may bedubbed the Milli Vanilli rider in honour of a small and largely forgottenscandal. I will say no more about it here.

Concerning causal credit, the acknowledgement and praise that performersseek depends upon certain displayed skills which are acquired to meet certainmusical challenges. Such skills are the prime virtues of the accomplished player.One can fake such skills or take various shortcuts, thus obscuring the realdistance that otherwise separates those fully equipped with and those deficientin such skills.6

Just what must a performer do in order to take proper credit for aperformance? The answer to that involves means-testing which pins creditupon legitimate performing resources. In the professional ethics ofperformance, what counts as playing something fair-and-square turns on acertain standardized causal environment. Were our options fixed, nothingmuch would be at stake. But as technology transforms the causal environment,customary standards are themselves accused of sustaining outmodedconceptions of accomplishment. Specifically, performers may, despite assumingan immediate causal role in the production of sound, lack the full responsibilityfor it we conventionally expect in performance. Let us consider such a case insome detail.

Suppose that one can offer a performance of a very difficult work byperforming something which is very much easier to execute. Can one takecredit for the more difficult execution? Must the audible sound bear someparadigm causal relation to what the performer causally contributes? Must aplayer directly execute the pitches and rhythms of some work as notated inorder to perform it? Does a performance of that work require executing it aswritten within conventional margins for error and discretionary alteration? Inresponse to a rhetorical: Well, how else can it be done!, consider a virtualdevice related to the ring modulator, a common input-output sound gener-ating device, which complicates performance credit considerably.

Simple ring modulators have an internal oscillator set at a determinatefrequency. On its own, the modulators output is that of its oscillator; forexample, a pitch with frequency 1,000 Hz. With an added input, the modulatorgives as output two co-occurring frequencies which are simple functions ofthe oscillator frequency and the input frequency from the player; for example,


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the sum of the two frequencies (the sum tone or upper sideband) and thedifference between them (the difference tone or lower sideband). For simplicity,I will consider only modulators that have as output a single sideband. Suchmodulators are called frequency shifters.7

Suppose a player uses a conventionally tuned instrument (for example, aviolin or guitar) to play a certain work. If the player wants a sounding of thatwork as output, but feeds the input as scored through a modulator, the outputwill not sound like the work. Why? If the player inputs pitches prescribed inthe works score, the modulator output takes each pitch and, say, subtractsthe oscillators frequency from it. To sound the work properly through themodulator, the player must input a sequence of pitches unrelated harmonicallyto the works score but related mathematically; for example, by the subtractionfunction characteristic of a modulator which outputs difference tones. Whatthe player actually sounds on the instrument to get some work as output isthat work as scored plus the modulators oscillation frequency. For each notatedpitch n, the player must execute pitches of frequency n + 1,000 Hz to get thework as output. Call this revised pitch sequence when notated the shiftedscore. If played from the shifted score without the modulator, the outputsound is quite unlike that of the chosen work. When one plays from the shiftedscore through the modulator, the output sounds just like the chosen work.

But, the modulators internal oscillator can be set at any frequency. Becausethere are an indefinite number of frequencies available on the modulator,there are an indefinite number of shifted scores of the same work which, whenplayed as input into a modulator set at a given frequency, will yield an outputsounding as the desired work sounds.

Such distinct shifted scores demand distinct patterns of execution and sowill present varying orders of difficulty for a given player. Some will requirevirtuosic talents, others mere proficiency. For example, a modulator using asubtraction function and yielding difference tones requires that the playerexecute higher frequency pitches than those notated in the original score.Playing higher notes is sometimes physically more demanding than playinglower ones. One can reverse the difficulty by playing in low positions a workoriginally set in high positions via a modulator using an addition functionwhich produces only sum tones.

In principle, for the sounding of any work, there exists a shifted score theexecution of which falls within the proficiency of any player. Depending onthe modulator, any player at any level of skill can execute any work with equalcontrol, no matter how difficult in its original scoring.

Musical sensitivity is affected. Expressive subtlety comes increasingly undercontrol the more one can take for granted technical execution. Some modulatorcan conceivably allow the expressively sensitive but technically weak player toshine as brightly as the sensitive, talented virtuoso and so achieve expressiveparity with the virtuoso. Indeed, difficult, virtuosic, and other termssignalling great technical skill might cease to carry any weight. They become

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merely relational terms, relative to some pre-defined but ultimately arbitrarymodulator. Such terms may even acquire a negative tone of inconvenienceand nuisance, referring to pesky obstacles which can be corrected with theappropriate prosthetic modulator.

Someone is sure to object that to democratize proficiency thus runs afoulof lingering conventions about accomplishment. Isnt the modulator-dependent weak player like the runner on steroids? Isnt the player whodemonstrates unassisted technical mastery somehow more honest to and withthe work and thus somehow musically more creditworthy?

But what properly makes for creditworthiness? What exactly is involved intaking full responsibility for ones performance? It cant so much matter howhard the conventional player works. The modulator-assisted player may workjust as hard. Furthermore, no one requires that every musician start fromsome state of equal skill or opportunity. Natural talent and social opportunityvary. Still, those short on facility cannot professionally compensate for theirlimitations with a machine, nor should expectations of hard work figurestrongly. Virtuosic does not precisely describe a species of difficulty. Thatterm usually reflects only the actual distribution of abilities which may beimproved overall through training. Just as yesterdays typical runner, for whomthe four minute mile was impossible, would fall behind todays typical runner,so yesterdays flashy player might become todays struggler.

For a player to take proper credit for a performance, the performance mustdisplay the virtues of skill and expertise which professionally enable players toperform what they perform. In this sense, to take causal credit, one must beproperly in a position to take full credit for what one has done under terms ofappropriate agency. If results were all that mattered, no one could fault thosewho customized their modulators to enable the easiest input. Indeed, anyonewho willingly chose a more difficult course would seem stubborn and appearto adopt the unconvincing air of a boastful show-off. On the other hand, ifresults-hardest-won are the prime objective, players would take the palm forthe least facultative modulator settings. One could imagine competitions wherethe contestants adopted increasingly nasty modulator settings for originallysimple pieces. After all, if the game is to suffer yet survive, then the winnermust suffer the most by surviving the worst technical trials. But if suchmasochism hasnt much to do with music, unassisted technical skill seems tobecome rather shallow a condition for creditworthiness.

Though imaginary, the modulator case is merely an extension of a veryreal, new breed of machines, the so-called intelligent or smart instruments.8

Consider Joel Chadabes interactive composing device (1984) which employsThrmin antennae and special drumpads:

Software translates [manual] gestures into high-level musicalprocesses. With Chadabes Solo system, a wave of the composershand can cause the tempo of a musical process to change and the


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harmony to shift. The proliferation of inexpensive computersputs the capability of intelligent instruments within the reach ofvirtually every musician who wants them.9

This easy access facilitates expressiveness in ways hitherto unimagined. Onesinstrument becomes much more than an extension of ones body. It becomesvirtually a collaborator:

The intelligent instruments that already exist promise a new age ofcommunication in which the attention of musicians can be on theirinner messages. Musicians need not worry as to whether theinstrument will be powerful enough to represent the message. Theyneed not worry whether they will be virtuosic enough to play theinstrument. These concerns can be left to the instrument itself.10

Well then, what is amiss about using modulator enhancement? Why should

attributions of creditworthiness favour the conventional player? Answer: usinga modulator-enhanced conventional instrument to perform a work does notamount to performing the work itself but merely to being causally implicatedin sound sequences as of the work. Being causally implicated in sound sequencesas of some work is possibly necessary but is not sufficient for performance ofthat work. I must elaborate.

The modulator, though physically realizable, is just an abstract functionover pitches. Score any sequence of pitches, and you can, in principle, define amodulator which takes this sequence as input and outputs the pitch sequenceheard as O Canada. Any pitch sequence can, with its suitable modulator,represent any other sequence such that the former as input is sufficient for thelatter as output. These scores bid the player to directly cause certain pitchesthose of Rule Britannia, saywith the assurance that O Canada will emergeas output. Have I played O Canada by playing Rule Britannia? Scarcely. Ihave perhaps sounded O Canada, but Ive played nothing but Rule Britannia.Never mind what you hear out the end. Snip the cable connecting me to mymodulator and Rule Britannia alone fills your hall.

Imagine a more graphic case for denying full causal credit for the output.All I can manage on a conventional guitar is a monophonic version of Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star. A parcel arrives containing a mysterious device which Ilater learn is a sophisticated modulator. On the device is a dial with varioussettings named: Dowland: Fantasy in G (Renaissance Lute); Bach:Chaconne in D Minor (Baroque Violin); Weiss: Passacaglia in D (BaroqueLute); Britten: Nocturnal Op. 70 (Guitar). The instructions read: (a) Clipthe device around the soundhole; (b) Set the dial at one of the settings; (c)Play Twinkle, Twinkle. I set the dial to the Bach and, lo, as I go through therelevant Twinkle, Twinkle motions the room resounds with Chaconne in DMinor.

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Have I performed the solo violin masterpiece? Absolutely not. Why not?Simply, because I cannot play it. I cant play the violin. And, anyway, even if Icould, Ive neither the skill nor the training, the talent nor the expertise forsuch a challenge. After all, one does not what one cannot do.

To count as a performance of the Chaconne, one must here ignore what Iimmediately do and attend only to the proximate results of that activity. But ifthe mere presence of some causal link between what I literally do (that is,Twinkle, Twinkle motions) and the Chaconne-sounding output is sufficient formy having performed the Chaconne, then any input can so count in principle,so long as one can define a function which will get one from ones immediateplaying activity to the desired work-sounding output. Consider the typicalplayer input for a given work; for example, a determinate sequence of handmovements on a conventionally tuned instrument under standard playingconditions. Abstracted, this constitutes a performance function for that work.Since no official requirement exists that there be one single performance-func-tion (or family of functions) for a given work, isnt the door open for theplayer to define any function whatever?

But this is clearly absurd. Why? Because it legitimates the following perfor-mance-function for the Chaconne: (a) Retrieve a compact disc containingPinchas Zukermans Chaconne; (b) Place the disc in a CD player; (c) Set theplayer to the Chaconne track; (d) Activate the player. Talk about play-in-a-day! (Suppose Zukerman himself clips on the device and follows instructionsfaithfully. Has he then performed the Bach? Despite his proven ability to doso, on this occasion we have no reason to attribute this sounding of theChaconne to him. Because we cannot here appeal to lack of ability impliesthat, although such a lack may be sufficient to withhold attributions ofaccomplishment, it cannot be necessary. Zukerman has no claim here justbecause he has not done the right things, caused the right movementsatleast as convention requires.) What matters is what musicians physically dorather than what listeners actually hear.11

Neither sameness of or difference in acoustic outputwhat the listenerhears at the endprovide sufficient grounds for determining performanceresponsibility and creditworthiness. However necessary physical skill is forcreditworthiness, one cannot, as a mere listener, read back from what is heardto the players creditworthiness and hence skilfulness. Consider an analogybetween moral motivation and physical skill. Just as one might argue thattwins acting from different motives who produce the same result do notnecessarily merit equal moral praise, so players whose activity results in thesame experience for the listener do not automatically merit equalcreditworthiness for that result if they employ different means. Morecontentiously, just as twins acting from the same motive might be equallypraiseworthy or blameworthy, however different the actual results, so we cannotautomatically deny equal creditworthiness to both players just because whatthe listener hears differs. If causal parity implies credit parity, then whatever


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one player can take credit for, so can the other in the sense of claiming equalskill. Like moral virtue, performance creditworthiness is not a function ofresults alone. Because listeners cannot decide differential causal credit merelyon the basis of what they hear, listeners cannot judge on aural grounds alonewho is the more skilled.12

This asymmetry of creditworthiness comes to life when we consider recordedperformances. Whatever we hear on a recording is not itself sufficient to groundjudgements of the players real role and true merit. At most we can judgecharitably that the player is as if creditworthy. Why? Because some playerswho make recordings may lack the skill in real-time to execute flawlessly morethan a few measures at a time. Compare stage-acting with movie-acting. Thestage-actor cannot rely on multiple takes but must perform continuouslythroughout. A movie-actor with a terrible memory faces lethal danger on thestage. For the technically deficient musician, the recording studio like the filmstudio (read modulated environment) compensates fully, so such a playermay have a successful recording career. Has any such bit player ever actuallyperformed any work having never played anything entirely non-stop? No long-standing traditions give one any reason for saying so. Whatever output thelistener hears, unless two players can swap without noticeable effect the waysthey produce such an output, they are not equally creditworthy within ourpresent traditions of musicianship. Presumably, any non-stop player can changeplaces with any bit player. If the reverse is not true, the non-stop player holdsa higher skill rank than the other and thus enjoys a greater degree ofcreditworthiness than the other. No mere listener would or could draw thisconclusion.

But, one may retort, these very traditions are just thatmere traditions.Why must they count? Cant listeners just reject them? If they do so, whatlisteners respect in music becomes purely phenomenal. We will see in Chapter2 that, for musicians, far from being mere traditions, they are deeply constitutiveof musical practice which, unsurprisingly, derives its very nature from entireperformance communities.

The listener standpoint detaches performance from the player. Indeed, itcreates an exploitable divide between phenomenal or listener-centredperformance and agent or player-centred performance. Phenomenalperformances can be distinguished and judged purely as acoustic phenomena.They may also be evaluated as acoustic phenomena which are as if caused byplayers under certain conditions of performance. Because, for centuries,phenomenal and agent performances have been directly and uniformly linked,judgements about the phenomenal performance have been taken comfortablyto be transferable to those about agent performance.

Performance attribution and thus creditworthiness presuppose certainprimary causal conventions which smart instruments upset. Among thesenorms is the assumption that repertoire is rankable not only in terms of itsmusical value but also in terms of what level of player it demands. To perform

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such repertoire, one must not only sound it directly; one must sound it fair-and-square within the expectations of physical skill to which players tacitlysubscribe. Such expectations occasionally face daunting trials. About his ViolinConcerto, Opus 36 (1936), Schoenberg warned players thus: I am delightedto add another unplayable work to the repertoire. I want the concerto to bedifficult and I want the little finger to become longer. I can wait.13 Schoenberghere unequivocally, if mockingly, embraces the value of physical skill, onewhich is intrinsic to a long tradition of music-making.

As we will see, this long tradition has not gone unchallenged. Indeed, onecan easily imagine this tradition succumbing finally to technologicaldisplacement. While it lasts, however, at its core is firmly entrenched theimmediate unassisted causal primacy of the performer. That primacyunderwrites creditworthiness. Even though full performance (as discussedbelow) involves third-party listeners essentially, the centrality of physical actionputs the listeners experience in a subservient place. Given that we must attendfirst and foremost to real physical skills, musicianship falls squarely within thecraft tradition where it has been at home for millennia. Recording technologyand computers are busy unseating that tradition. When it goes, phenomenalperformance will be all that matters.

Intended audiences: the point of performance

Performances are not reflective activities savoured by their agents in solitude.Performances reach out for listeners. They are other-directed, or, in the idiom,given. Unlike rehearsals, exploratory sight-reading, recreational practice, andother player-centred activities, performances are specifically and directlyintended, designed, or meant for audiences. As purposive activities, their telosis to be experienced by those for whom the performer prepares them.

Rehearsals preceding the formal ritual of playing before an audience cannotbe confused with the performance itself. The rehearsal is preparatory practicefor performance. Performances rationalize and explain rehearsals preceding them.Any one performance may support many rehearsals, even though a performanceand a rehearsal for it may be aurally indistinguishable. Indistinguishable heremeans either something weakly descriptive like falls into the same class of relatedinterpretations, or evaluative like provides no purely musical grounds forpreference. Rehearsals and performances not only may be, but often are intendedto be, acoustically intersubstitutable. They are, however, functionally distinct.Playing episodes are rehearsals if and only if there is some further intendedplaying episode for which they are rehearsals. Rehearsals are thus dependentupon and subordinate to performancesat least, projected or plannedperformances. The final event may, after all, be cancelled.

As performances are for intended audiences, so rehearsals are for intendedperformances. Rehearsals must temporally precede performances. Onerehearses to perform, and one performs (among other things) to be heard by


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an audience. Though the rehearsal is indirectly undertaken for the sake of theintended audience, it is never intended that the audience hear the rehearsalthough when things go well one might wish that an audience were present.Most non-participating listeners present during rehearsal (for example,stagehands) are not meant or expected to listen to what is played. If theyshould hear something, the player scarcely intends that whatever they hear isheard as (part of) the performance. Players use this to advantage. One canalways renounce or re-take something in rehearsal. Errors in rehearsal areacceptable, excusable, and reversible even if rehearsals remain serious business.One cannot say of a big blunder: Oh, it only took place in concert with thenonchalance of well, its just a rehearsal or gratitude of thank heavens, itsjust a rehearsal. Performance offers the agent no second thoughts or chances.

Anyone asked to judge a rehearsal is meant, obviously, to take note. Still,such judges are unlike audience members; for example, they may interrupt theplaying to comment and advise on how to improve things when the formalevent takes place. Importantly, the players are not playing to benefit their advisersas they do their audiences. From advisers they hope to gain rather than to give.

Rehearsals are playings which are purely means to other playings.Performances are never means to further playings. Thus there exists a teleolog-ical and temporal hierarchy among types of playing. This order reserves forperformance a sense of occasion which ordinarily never attaches to rehearsal.

What of the full dress rehearsal? Drama, ballet, and opera are all performingarts, and dress rehearsals serve a purpose directly relevant to these artforms.Unlike pure music, these artforms are hybrid. They involve combined elementsof music, dance, costume, set design, and so on. The dress rehearsal is oftenthe last (and even only) opportunity a director has of combining all the elementstogether before the scheduled performance. This allows the director last-minuterefinements, and gives the cast possibly a first taste of the whole production.With pure music, no corresponding reason exists to combine the elements.Players may wish to acquaint themselves with a halls acoustics and generalperforming ambience, but these form no part of the traditions of musicrehearsal, and certainly need not involve running through an entire programmein order, in tails.

Related remarks apply to the distinction between performances and largelyinformal activities like sight-reading, noodling, recreational practice, jam sessions,and the like. Such activities are self-contained and self-indulgent. Unlikerehearsals, they point to no future event, and, unlike performances, to no expect-ant listener. These are activities just for the player. Music-making boasts both itscasual and formal sides, its self-directed and other-directed aspects. Performanceand rehearsal bear, by dint of contrast, all the marks of the latter.

Why dedicate each performance to an intended audience? The question isnot about player motivation which may vary as widely as motivation generally,nor does it reflect the interests of audience members which, too, may differwidely. In what sense is a performance for some potential group? Perhaps the

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

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listener is merely a target. The occasion of performance is incomplete withoutan audience. Performance is relational. The intended audience is the valuethat fills the third blank in the schema:

Performs (player, work, audience)

This analysis is consistent with describing someone as playing at an audience.Other equally inadequate analyses would stress positional expressions likebefore an audience, in the presence of an audience, facing an audience,and the like.

These substitutions disappoint because they neglect the normative flavourof for conspicuous in expressions like: I did it just for you. Playerstraditionally are responsible to their art and to their audience. The audience isnot merely the receiver, but a privileged receiver, a beneficiary of the player,the performance being offered as the benefit. Some good is supposed to arisefrom a performance, and only incidentally that of enriching or immortalizingthe composer or performer. A classically Platonic theme, musicians in giving(offering, dedicating) their performances better (improve, benefit, construct-ively serve) their would-be listeners. That is integral to the craft of artisticentertainment.14

The accomplished musicianmust carefully appraise his audience,their attitude toward the expressive content of his program, theplace itself, and other additional factors. Nature has wisely providedmusic with every kind of appeal so that all might share in itsenjoyment. It thus becomes the duty of the performer to satisfy tothe best of his ability every last kind of listener.15

Musical works

Performance requires skilled agents causing specific intended soundsequences for the intended benefit of an audience. In improvisationaltraditions, the sound sequences emerge from and as the performers inventionin performance, though they are often anchored in familiar harmonic,rhythmic, or melodic stereotypes. In the recent classical tradition, suchsound sequences typically relate to specific musical works which are oftenthe invention of those other than the performer. Some think such worksexist apart from their performances. The sound sequences are related tothem by deriving from them.

Later on, I examine the relations between performances and works.16 Fornow, let us accept that such sequences are meant to constitute instances ortokens of independently identifiable musical works. A performance of a workis an intentionally caused sound sequence constituting an instance or token ofsome musical work. Two broad sets of issues arise from this.


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1 If performances are of works, how does this affect conditions for successfulperformance where the intention to perform the work may be frustrated? Iconsider sympathetically the view that one cannot have performed a givenwork without having intended to do so.

2 Works are independent of performers and come with bundles of properties.How is performance constrained by such properties? How is this constraintmanifested? Which properties are to count? I support the view that theconstraints works impose upon performances cannot be read off a priorifrom the scores of works. Such constraints, rather than being impressedupon performances through the works without the mediation of practiceconventions, are, rather, encapsulated in changing sets of performanceconventions (called constraint models) which are stable enough at a timeto determine what passes as an acceptable reflection of the work inperformance. More contentiously, in Chapter 3, I present a case for worksbeing collaboratively created in performance.

Works and intentions to perform them

The work provides a delimited objective for the performer (that is, what thesound sequence must instance) and one gauge of the performances relati

Stan Godlovitch-Musical Performance_ a Philosophical Study-Routledge (1998)

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